 |
|
Jul 22nd, 2024 at 15:34:36 - Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (PC) |
Best looking game I've ever played. I hardly ever play new stuff, but thanks to Game Pass, I get to see brand new games! Seriously, you feel like you are walking over the volcanic rocks in Iceland, getting sprayed by ocean surf. The environment is amazing. The game has the most realistic rocks I've ever seen.
The sound design is also incredible. Wear headphones. As with the first game, the "furies" (the voices inside Senua's head) are in your left and right ear, respectively, and other audio is also directional and will "swirl" around your head. Some cool effects. I found the furies to be less hostile to Senua in this game compared to the first. That's probably due to the fact that she has accepted her psychosis and sees it more as a strength rather than something that terrifies her. Indeed, she becomes something of a leader in this game.
It's similar to the first game, but everything is refined. I re-read what I wrote 4 years ago, and I said that the combat and puzzles were tiring and frustrating. I had no problems with either in this one. I thoroughly enjoyed the combat and the puzzles. Combat may play largely the same, but it was more challenging than I recall, and it's really meaty. The puzzles may have been more straightforward than the previous game, where I said they were tedious. There aren't many of them, and most of them involve "focusing" on these spheres of liquid, which either hide or show various parts of the environment, revealing and concealing paths. You just have to figure out how to reveal where you need to go to line up the runes, like the last game. The game is linear, with side paths here and there for some additional lore.
The only possible negative thing I can say is that some segments of the game are incredibly slow. One part in particular, Senua is pulling herself through some rocks on her back. It was s-l-o-w and took probably two minutes for her to pull herself through. There were a few other really slow moments like that. And I get the point of it. She's struggling, it's building serious atmosphere, etc. But man, I wonder how much game time would be shaved off if she moved faster.
Anyway, I thought Hellblade II was incredible. The settings are jaw-dropping, the story is compelling, you're always moving forward. It sucked me right in.
add a comment  - read this GameLog  |
|
Jul 18th, 2024 at 15:05:46 - Solar Ash (PC) |
Another stylish one with fluid movement! Solar Ash, it turns out, is a lot like Shadow of the Colossus, except instead of riding a horse, you "skate." It's kind of like if Tony Hawk's Pro Skater were about killing giant monsters instead of doing sick tricks. You play as Rei, a Voidrunner who is trying to activate a device that will prevent her planet from being devoured by a black hole. Neat premise for sure.
You'll explore other planets with unique terrains that were already devastated. I think that each successive planet is more impressive than the one before it! One way Solar Ash impresses is by creating an awe-inspiring sense of scale. You are tiny little Rei, and you are in this giant area with interconnected destroyed planets, each with their own gravity. They've all been infected by "remnants," giant monsters which you need to destroy to progress.
Each planet has four or five smaller remnants and then a huge boss remnant. The smaller ones are all wrapped around buildings, and are timed platforming puzzles. The remnants have weak spots, and you have to skate/climb/jump around hitting the weak spots on timers before the remnant burns you. The bosses are like in Shadow of the Colossus. You climb up on them, then skate around knocking out those weak spots on timers, which is extra tricky because the boss is moving around. Some of them providing a tough challenge, and in a way it felt like playing Neon White in a sci-fi world because you have to hit each weak spot before a timer runs out--speedrunning the boss.
The movement and puzzle-platformy boss fights are where it's at. Narratively, the premise is interesting, but the presentation is a bit dense. I understood the broad picture, but the details, the side characters, didn't coalesce for me. I'm sure there is more there if I found all the logs and did the side quests, learned more about each planet and how its people tried to save them. The game tackles themes like grief and loss, but requires more unpacking than I felt like.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Jul 17th, 2024 at 12:55:29 - Neon White (PC) |
This was fantastic! It's a speedrunning game with perfect movement, smooth as butter to play. I'm not a speedrunner or someone who tends to chase high scores, but everything about the design of Neon White motivated me to do it here, at least through chapter 7 or so until I just wanted to finish the game because I have so many others to get to on Game Pass before the month is out.
The gameplay is based around using cards, which you pick up during each level. You can hold up to two types of cards and three of each type at any given time. Left mouse uses the active card's primary ability (a gun of some sort) and right mouse uses its discard ability (a movement ability). For example, the green "stomp" card fires a machine gun with the left mouse and with the right mouse you fall quickly and stomp the ground (useful for killing enemies from above, smashing doors in the floor, or, well, falling quickly). The game almost always gives you the cards you need to use in order, such that you don't have to switch cards manually. I thought at the beginning I was going to be switching cards, but very rarely will you need to do this. Adding that pressure on top of an already lightning speed game might have broken my nerves. As it was, I couldn't play too long without taking a break!
Levels are short (I'd say they average 40 seconds or so, shorter in the beginning of the game and longer toward the end) and are worth playing again and again. If you finish, you get a bronze medal, and then there are silver, gold, and "ace" medals for getting better times. As you get better medals in each level, you'll be able to see the ghost of your best time, see a hint for shortcuts, see leaderboards, and see a collectible gift. The hints were neat. It doesn't just tell you or show you what to do; rather, there is a golden hand icon around where the shortcut is, and you still have to figure out what exactly to do there. The collectible gifts are in hard-to-reach places and involve deviating from the path or using your cards in ways unintended by the main path of the level (e.g., figuring out how to use the cards at your disposal to reach a gift that is on top of a spire).
I was feeling really good. Through chapter 7, I'd gotten nearly all ace medals and gifts. And once you get the hang of the game, you'll start to see shortcuts without being shown where they are. After chapter 7, when I stopped replaying levels, I still routinely got ace and gold on my first try, and then that faded to silver and bronze as the levels got more complicated closer to the end.
The gifts unlock special dialogue scenes and challenge levels for the other characters. The challenge levels were really neat. With one character, you can't use discard abilities in their challenge level. Another character's challenge levels were like deathtrap obstacle courses.
I enjoyed the story and characters too. You're all speedrunning and killing demons because you were all very bad in life, and now you're dead, in Heaven, cleaning it up and competing for prizes awarded by angels and "Believers," who are smug little angel/cherub creatures that run the place in the absence of God. You and the other main characters knew each other in life, and as you play through the game, you learn more about that. The characters reminded me of Disgaea or something, like silly JRPG or anime stuff. Of course, you all end up not being too excited about killing demons for the Believers as you learn more about the main characters and the Believers themselves. Everything is not as it appears...
Chalk this up as one that, in hindsight, I would have purchased on Steam to own instead of temporarily having access to on Game Pass. Ah, well! Maybe once a year, I can get some more ace medals!
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Jul 16th, 2024 at 07:33:40 - The Case of the Golden Idol (PC) |
The Case of the Golden Idol really engaged my brain, until both it and my brain broke. I've never played anything quite like this, though I read that Return of the Obra Dinn is similar, and I've been wanting to play that anyway. This is like a point-and-click detective game. You are presented with a series of narratively and spatially connected chapters. Each chapter contains at least one "room" or "screen", each with various objects to click on. Clicking on the objects reveals information, some of which itself is clickable and gets stored in a book of words. You then use the words to complete mad-lib-type "scrolls" and solutions that explain what happened in the chapter.
The pacing is nice and goes from easy, as you're learning the ropes, to really complex. The story spans several years and is full of political intrigue. In the last couple chapters, you need to refer to previous chapters to remember characters and plot points. If you get stuck, you can access up to four hints in each chapter. The first time I was going to use a hint, on I-forget-which-chapter, I clicked on "access hints" and it brought up four categories of hint. Just reading one of the category names prompted me to re-examine something, and I figured it out! Did I technically use a hint?
Fast forward two or three more chapters, and I'm feeling quite proud of myself, and smug, for solving everything on my own. Enter chapter IX. There was a murder at an estate. Tons of people were there, all with their political backstories and motives. The constable had taken accounts from all the attendees as to their timelines of events, some of which were vague or contradicted others. I knew there were two poisonings and a theft. I thought there was a third poisoning because one of the characters' behaviors seemed to fit the description of side effects, but whether he was or wasn't on something didn't matter. I did miss a second theft, which a hint pointed me to. This chapter ended up frustrating me because you have to work out political motives. There are several different ways you could reason them out, and you just have to try them all until one works. I could not for the life of me figure out the solution scroll on this one, though, and ended up just looking it up online.
"Trying them all until one works" ends up being a strategy you can use, especially if you know you've got most of the solution correct. The game both encourages/discourages this because if you have two or fewer mistakes in your solution, it tells you. You can swap words in and out, and you know you had something right when you swap a word and the "you have two or fewer mistakes" goes away. Other times, it's like answering a multiple choice question where the teacher doesn't account for grammar. If it says, "[name] [name] went to the [noun] to [verb] a [noun]" and your available nouns are like garden, sky, bathroom, idol and your verbs are take, killed, framed, and shoot, then obviously the verb is the present "to take" because the others are past tense except "shoot," and you wouldn't shoot any of those nouns. So someone went to the bathroom to take a shower. But there are so many names, and they always use first and last names (and some people have multiple identities), that the names are the really tricky part! It'll say something like "[name] [name] and [name] [name] went to the [noun] to [verb] [name] [name] because [name] [name] wanted to [verb] [name] [name] with [name] [name]" and you're like "uuuuuh..." So, chapter IX ruined me...
Case X was a brain-scratcher with math that I almost solved, but I swear there was an error in the writing. People are on trial and they get "merit deductions" for violating core virtues. Someone got such a large merit deduction that they were killed. I used one hint to figure out the mode of death. I had thought of entering that mode of death, but didn’t because it sounded weird the way it was worded. So much for my "bad multiple choice question" strategy. One thing you have to do in this chapter is deduce how many merits each core virtue is worth so that you can figure out who died because the person who died had the biggest merit deduction. In the solution, you have to write how many merits they lost. I got the number of merits wrong, but this is not on me! I calculated that the guy was charged with 88 merits (and this was verified by one of the optional solutions that I got right), but one of the other people on trial said that they didn’t charge him for fashion crimes, which would decrease the total merit deduction by 2. He should have 86! Yet the solution is that he lost 88, not 86. Why would they have that character say something that is wrong? Frustrating.
Great. Last chapter! It was another murder-filled doozy like chapter IX. I was slowly working through it but encountered a series of unfortunate bugs that killed the game. First, it stopped letting me open scrolls. I rebooted the game, and the scrolls started working again. I used a hint. It told me the hint and then, for some reason, played the ending scene as if I'd solved the scroll, which I hadn't. I exited out, came back, and sure enough, the scroll was solved. Okay...? Whatever. Let's finish. On to the epilogue, one final case with three scrolls to complete. I completed the first. I was working on the second. In the last chapter and the epilogue, you can revisit old chapters to refresh your memory of characters and past events. I went back to the chapter with the rituals, and the game bugged out again, getting stuck on the scene with the footprints in the forest. Every time I closed it and clicked on something else, it just opened the screen with the footprints again. Click click click click. It wouldn't let me do anything else. Then..."Thanks for playing!" on the ending screen. What?! I went back to the menu, re-opened the chapter, and sure enough, all the scrolls were completed.
I was really enjoying Case of the Golden Idol! Even when it got hard, I was enjoying scratching my head and marveling at the connections, even if the complexity was becoming a bit frustrating. I definitely didn't like that my math was wrong in chapter X, when logically it was correct. And then the game bugged out a few times and messed up the last chapter and the epilogue, which really sucked and left me with a sour taste for the whole experience. I'll have to try Return of the Obra Dinn!
add a comment - read this GameLog |
